The question that came up repeatedly concerned Apple selling 10 million …

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If the conference call for Apple's second fiscal quarter were a drinking game and the figure of speech was "iPhone," not a six-figure analyst would be left standing. The iPhone came up repeatedly, and repeatedly Apple executives refused to comment on a 3G model and expressed confidence in selling 10 million units in 2008. Aside from that, there were a few interesting comments. A long bullet list includes:

While Apple did not break out numbers for the MacBook Air, they were asked about demographics and the response was that appeal was "universal." Further, cannibalization of other portable models was described as "low." And while the MBA was supply-constrained into March, a balance between supply and demand was reached by April.

Interestingly, the Mac Pro sold better last quarter than in any quarter since the transition to Intel CPUs.

Incredibly, half of all Macs bought in Apple Store continue to be sold to those new to the platform.

Those surging Mac sales are showing consistent growth across geographies, even in Japan.

Apple had expected a "sharper seasonal decline" in iPhone sales, greater than what took place.

In response to a question about iPhone price cuts in Europe and who decides what, the reply was that "carrier partners are free to price the iPhone as low as they wish." Sure, if they want to sell at a loss.

The iPhone faced stock outages in the US Apple Stores late in the quarter. One reason reason offered was that there may have been multiple purchases being unlocked and resold overseas—that number is "significant" but not known.

Related to the endless probing over the 10 million phone prediction, it was noted that the number includes all iPhones sold, both locked and those that are unlocked.

Revenue from iPhones sales between March 6th and when the iPhone 2.0 software is released will be deferred, but phone sales will be counted.

There was a lot of boring talk about gross margins centering around Apple exceeding guidance of 32 percent. Apparently, lower component pricing more than made up for the price reduction on the Shuffle, currency shifts, and iTunes being a "bigger part of the mix" for the quarter.

While Apple refused to talk about the larger US economy and the effects of recession, it was noted that Mac sales and Apple Retail Store traffic both showed huge gains YOY.

Leopard revenue was down sharply (as expected) since its debut, dropping from $170 million to $40 million, quarter to quarter. Not surprisingly, it is also the best selling version of OS X so far.

About that $19 billion dollars in cash. There were "no announcement today" on what will be done with it. Interpret freely.

The Best Buy rollout has been going "extremely well," with 400 stores already selling product, 600 by the end of summer.

The iPhone SDK has seen 200,000 downloads.

Guidance for this quarter is $7.2 billion in revenue, compared to $5.4 billion for the same period last year.

Apparently, the Apple TV is headed for photos on milk cartons sold in the cafeteria on the Apple Campus in Cupertino, because it just didn't come up. Of course, the biggest question of all will remain speculation: how will Apple sell 10 million iPhones in 2008? With the 3G iPhone imminent, possibly appearing in July, sales will only fall further this quarter, perhaps to as low as 1.3 million. If that happens, Apple will need to sell 7 million iPhones in the second half of the year.